October Narrative Seminar

Creating a Narrative Workshop

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Lesson Objective: Become more familiar/comfortable creating narrative "skeleton".

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Introduction

• Welcome to the Creating a Narrative seminar, my name is DrAkimoto. If you don't know me, I'm a member of the seminar team, site Crit, internet outreach, chat staff, as well as the author of 59 pages on the wiki (46 of which are SCP articles). Today I'm hoping, to shed some light on these pesky narratives and how to form your own narrative skeleton.

Part 1 - What is a Narrative?

• Narrative: a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events;
  • or to it put simply for our purposes, it's the story you're going to tell.

• Why do I need a narrative?
  • Because we are a fiction writing community, not just a bunch of nerds listing off weird objects we made up.
  • Narratives are what keeps things interesting on-site. This is the reason we have dozens of similar anomalies/themes and yet still have totally unique stories made from them.

• What's a Narrative Skeleton, well I made it up, but it's what I consider to be the most "bare bones" description of your story, the building blocks for the meat of your article. A lot of times this can be broken down to who, what, where, why, and how.

• So two more important things to keep in mind is both having a hook and keeping the narrative original/interesting.
  • Keep it interesting: We don't want a washed up over used narrative, a boring one, or one that is too hard to unserstand. In short, you want to keep you reader interested while not confusing them.
  • A hook is needed to to draw the reader in, it must fit within your narrative and help to further it along.

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• So now that you know you need a story, let's look at the traditional parts of a story and how they fit into the format of our site:

* Exposition, this is the set up for the story you're going to tell. Usually details such as who and what are fleshed out here. Luckily this is typically covered by the ConProcs and Description.
* This should be fairly easy, can y'all give some example of how to include you narrative in the containment procedures and/or description?
* My example: In you conrpocs have. alone like "The Foundation Parazoology Department is to monitor public libraries in Tampa County, Florida for increased visitation by local American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) populations.
* This give a clear indication that this story happens in Florida but also involves alligators and public libraries. It also acts as a hook to draw the reader in.

* Rising Action, this is the event or force that kicks off the story and puts the characters into action. The where and how can usually be found here.
* I like including a discovery section for this purpose, while not necessary, I feel it is a good way to kick off the story and introduce the original setting/characters involved.
* Can anyone think of an example of rising action in a SCP article?

• Climax, this is the turning point in you're story. In the case of shorter articles or implied narratives, this /could/ be where your story ends, for a funny article this most likely is your punchline.
  • Typically this is somewhere in your addendums and is usually the second if not the first most memorable part of the article.
  • I think we can all think of a twist ending or punchline that fits this criteria.

• Falling Action, this is usually where a story begins to work towards its conclusion. The characters are tested, the tides turn, etc. This is a good spot to flesh out the "why" if it's going to be explored.
  • In an SCP article this is a good place to sew the seeds of a final twist and/or lead/mislead your reader to the final conclusion.

• Conclusion, its the end, the final punch of the article. All your plot points should be tied up at this point (or not if you're writing a cliffhanger) or where the final reveal occurs.
  • An example of this in an SCP article would be a final note/log/addendum that sums up the final events or overall outcome of the situation.

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• Now, a lot of people will point to some of our shorter articles and say "But Aki, this doesn't have a narrative– it's just (insert weird thing) and that's it. To which I will reply, yeah probably.
  • As much as narratives are important they don't need to be the main focus of the article and sometimes can be seen as nonexistent. But if we take a closer look I think we can fit these articles into two camps:
    • 1) No narrative, it just doesn't have one and people still like (this happens a lot with much older articles)
    • 2) Implied narrative: The narrative is there, but you need to use the clues provided to figure out what's really going on.
      • I'd like to focus on option 2, it's the most likely to succeed, and in my opinion, are really fun to write.
      • Writing a narrative in a short format is often about knowing what information you need to include to portray your story clearly.
      • So when trying to imply a narrative it's important to, you know, have a narrative. The difference being that knowing what NOT to say will be just as important.

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• Narrative Examples:
  • Typical Narrative: Typical article that uses the anomaly or situation to tell a coherent story:
    • http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-4508
      • In this article the anomaly is an indestructible otter statue with a live dude stuck inside. A Very simple and purposefully boring anomaly, the story however covers the themes of trust and friendship, while detailing the events leading to the creation of the statue.
    • Most medium length articles fit into this category.
  • Long-Form Narrative: Long, fully fleshed out stories usually using a series of logs. These are hard to write in a coherent and interesting way, so let's look at two articles that do it right:
    • SCP-4000 http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-4000
      • Taboo is a good example of a long-form article that manages to both tell a story and keep that story interesting enough to make it to the end. The use of characters and character interaction is what really shines in this piece.
    • SCP-1730 "What Happened to Site-13?
      • In my opinion, this is one of the best examples of a well written long-form article that uses every avenue available to explore and otherwise boring base anomaly. "Foundation site from another reality" is a boring concept on its own, but the story of how it ended up here is folded into the story of figure it out in a compelling way that keeps you reading.
  • Short Form/Implied Narrative: Short works that use the situation, setting, anomaly, and other aspects to indirectly tell a story. A good example of this, albeit to an extreme, off-site would be "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.", only 6 words but using your own knowledge and context clue– a story is told.
    • SCP-4376 http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-4376
      • This is a fantastic use of space, the article simply describes the anomaly using keywords as clues that become apparent with the final "reveal" dialogue that makes the rest immediately click.
    • SCP-5409 http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-5409
    • Some this is very short and the entire story is told through setting and one line written by an unnamed "character", but the story is implied through the final reveal and reflection on the clues given in the main article.

Part 2 - Ask your questions

* This is usually where we will do some sort of group activity but I just don't think that would be as helpful here. Everyone has a different misunderstanding of narratives, how to use/make them, and/or why we need them to begin with.
* I'd like to take this time to answer any questions you may have regarding narratives and their relation to the scp format.

Conclusion

• So in conclusion, we talked about the different parts of a story and how they fit into the scp format, why it's important to have these stories, and what they look like in action.
  • Always remember that the story is what makes your anomaly shine, not the other way around.

• Here are some links that I find usually,

http://www.scpwiki.com/yourjouney-part-2

http://www.scpwiki.com/an-exercise-in-narrative-based-scps

But most importantly, you gotta read. Read as much as you can, both on-site and off, reading will absolutely improve your writing ability- without a doubt.

• Assure participants they can come to you if they have any questions

• Thank everyone for coming

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